AT&T to buy rural phone co Centennial for $944 mln

Another small carrier bites the dust...Apparently Blue is still hungry.

 

Lol, when I saw the title of the thread I thought about the song "another one bites the dust...". But I bet the Verizon/Alltel merger was a propellant for this buyout. They are always in constant battle.

 

Yeesh, another carrier merger here in Lansing, MI.

Alltel becoming Verizon, Centennial becoming AT&T, MetroPCS becoming introduced.

 

LOL. That's funny. That's what's happening up here too. Minus the whole Centennial thing, but they are close by. I was actually hoping this would happen for a while now. Centennial offers GSM service in many counties and towns in Michigan that AT&T and Dobson never reached. With this acquisition, AT&T will cover the entire state of Michigan with 850 MHz coverage except along the Grand Rapids-Lansing-Saginaw area corridor. It doesn't matter though cuz they have those areas covered pretty well with PCS coverage.

We may also be seeing another merger in Michigan soon. One between Sprint and iPCS.

 

Oy, iPCS. Well see if that happens.

 

Wonderful. Yet another competitor is gone.

 

That gets the southwestern Mississippi, and north and central Louisiana parts of Centennial adjoining the AT&T Mobility cellular near me, south of Memphis. These were among the closer places I could go to (attempt to) see roaming displays on my handset, and an MNC-MMC other than 310-410 (310-030).

There was already PCS coverage along I-20 and US highways, but get deeper out into the counties and parishes, and you roamed onto Centennial. It will make AT&T more competitive with Alltel (VZW) in both states, and RCC Unicom (VZW) in Mississippi.

COtech

 

So how many small regional carriers are left? How soon do you think the rest will be acquired by either of the big 4? I wish Sprint and T-Mobile would hurry and buy some of those regionals before AT&T and Verizon buy them all. This is just a matter of time before they're all gone.

 

There's a few small ones left. Specifically, here in the Midwest, there's carriers like Cellcom, Illinois Valley Cellular, and Thumb Cellular that are likely to be bought out by Verizon eventually. There's also small GSM carriers that AT&T will likely acquire, like Einstein PCS, Kankakee Cellular, and Cellular Properties. Here's a link to a site that shows the A and B side cellular carriers for the nation and regions. You can do the math as to the recent mergers and such:The Cellular/PCS License Resource

 

The only thing Sprint might do is buy IPCS but that's about it. Sprint and T-Mobile don't have the money to do things like that.

Verizon and AT&T are just going to continue to get bigger and bigger with their money and I think we have good reason to be concerned about that.

 

And if the FCC can finagle it they'll approve sprint and tmobile getting bought. It's easier to regulate a couple big companies than lots of small ones.

 

Right, Sprint is in no condition to buy anyone right now for obvious reasons, and T-Mobile is in the middle of an expensive 3G upgrade, plus they just bought Suncom. However, I would say they are a bit better positioned than Sprint to acquire a small carrier at this time. Hopefully they can grab some of what's left.

 

Logical mergers/buyouts for T-Mobile USA:

iWireless (already T-Mobile affiliate) - central/eastern Iowa
Long Lines Wireless - western Iowa, and southeastern South Dakota
Einstein PCS (owned by Native Americans, not sure what tribe up in WI) - Wisconsin (statewide)
Chinook Wireless - Montana (statewide)

Glad they go Suncom - I realise the above operators are not nearly as valuable as Suncom is to T-Mobile - but still!

Anyone think any of this could happen? Einstein, to me, seems to be a logical fit. As does iWireless - maybe not Long Lines (but who knows). And the reason I put Chinook in there is that I would rather see T-Mobile buy them up than at&t.

and yes... there are many small GSM operations still left: GSM Roaming - United States

 

The big question is who will wind up with US Cellular?

 

Another question: what overlapping cellular coverage areas (including part of Louisianna) might AT&T Mobility have to sell, and who would be interested? VZW is just getting into LA big, with the purchase of AllTel.

COtech

 

Here's my dream:

US Cellular picks up the majority of VZW divestitures. Then merges with Leap/MetroPCS to form a pretty nice nationwide network to compete with the bigboys. The resulting company adopts the unlimited model and starts eating at the bigboys forcing them to drop their prices. Everybody wins.

 

Yeah that would be great except then Verizon or someone else would swallow them up and the FCC would just let it happen like they always do.

 

There are still a ton of very small carriers that you rarely hear about.

We have a whole list of them starting here:
http://www.wirelessadvisor.com/resources/wireless-carriers-a-b

 

Perhaps Cellular South would be interested as they have properties in MS, AL, FL, and TN... if AT&T has to sell any overlap? Maybe that's a stretch since CSouth is a CDMA company.

 

US Cellular picks up the majority of VZW divestitures. Then merges with Leap/MetroPCS to form a pretty nice nationwide network ...... and then Verizon will come and buy it all out!

 

And the Feds will allow it to happen yet again!

 

Yeah... but with the Dems now in power there surely be more scrutiny.

 

Haven't the Dems been in power for 2 years?

 

Yes, but I believe that the GOP has control of the FCC.

 

The problem is justification for tying up all that capital to buy a company that you may already have a good roaming deal with. VZW and AT&T do it because they are large enough to incorporate other companies and reduce their overhead to make more money. T-Mobile is not large enough to absorb those other carriers without incurring extra costs. I bet in many cases they could break even on acquiring those companies, but they only have so much money!

That being said, depressed market values may make purchases more likely once there are signs of economic recovery. AT&T must feel the market won't get much worse, and that its the right time to buy Centennial.

 

Doesn't TMobile have roaming agreements with Centennial? If so...those will not be renewed I bet once at&t gets a hold of it.

 

I'm sure if T-Mobile needs those roaming agreements, they complained to the FCC. Many of these acquisitions have required the buyers to maintain the roaming agreements for x number of years.